1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus having a document search function, and a method for controlling the image processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been widely used a method for managing text information in the form of data as well as in paper form along with development in computers and image filing apparatuses. Accordingly, document search technique is crucial and important especially for an apparatus that stores a large amount of document files storing document data each comprising a plurality of pages.
For example, if a document file is recorded in the form of text information such as a character code, the text information may be directly searched to find a target keyword. Alternatively, if the document file is recorded in the form of image information, a target keyword may be searched for through optical character recognition (OCR) or other such processes.
Conventional search techniques are typically performed based on search of all filed documents and thus they may take a long search time.
Under some particular circumstances, however, a user knows which page includes target information (for example, a third page) when searching a document file including a plurality of pages. In such cases, if the user could designate a specific page (for example, the third page) and search only the designated page of the document, processing time would be reduced. However, conventional search techniques do not allow a search that is performed only in a designated page.
As to the related art, the following techniques are known as a page-based document processing technique.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-232008 discuses a page flipping method that displays pages including a designated page. However, this method is inapplicable to search of a designated page in a plurality of document files.
In addition, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-139244 discusses a method of storing a displayed page to designate a printing area. This technique allows a user to know a printing area using the page being displayed, and the first page and last page of a target file. However, this technique is also unfavorable for increase of a search speed by searching for a keyword based on page information.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-182320 discusses a technique that allows a user to designate a plurality pages in a document and performs similar document processing (for example, document editing) on the designated pages. However, this technique does not give special consideration to keyword search and thus cannot be used to increase a search speed by carrying out the search in a designated page, either.
The document search is absolutely needed in an apparatus that stores a large amount of document files storing document data, especially, files of documents including a plurality of pages, and how to increase a search speed is an important problem for this kind of apparatus.
As described above, however, almost all of the conventional techniques cannot conduct effective search other than basic processing of a full text search. Thus, it is difficult to increase a search speed.
If it is known which page of plural documents includes target information, according to the conventional techniques, it is only possible to display a target page using an application, for example, a browser to search the information and then repeat this processing over the plurality of documents. Therefore, if many documents should be searched, this method may take longer processing time than full-text search.